We’ve undergone injectable medications for fertility and more IUIs and no success. Gav asked today while at the toy store, “Mommy, when are we going to get a baby?” I would have never guessed that the most pressure to have another child would come from our own son. I’ve known so many other “only children” and wonder if their parents simply told them they didn’t want any more children and they too could not have anymore. I’ve chosen to remain open to him about it, however, I’m not sure if this was the right choice.

As far as the adoption-foster or domestic- we remain conflicted. Since we are still undergoing fertility treatment, we aren’t obligated to make any choices at this time. However, I hope our fertility treatments will be successful and I’m leaning towards opting for IVF so that we will not have to choose.

Since our last blog post, members of our family have undergone an investigation with child protective services. It was a bogus investigation, and there clearly was no abuse after just a little probing. The 2 month old baby had a hematoma, and the case was reported by mandatory reporters, ie a 3rd year resident probably without any children themselves. After almost 2 months of an open case and having to comply with “a safety plan” and obtaining lawyers from the Family Defense Center, they were able to move on with their lives. They could not spend the night in the same home as their baby for 2 months. They had to secure an alternate 24 hr caregiver for their baby “for supervised parenting” and caregiving overnight. It was either leave the baby with family hours away or risk having the baby removed from the home so that they parents could remain in their home and the baby remain in the Chicago area. I now see firsthand, what these investigations do to family and the amount of stress they pose. The caseworker refused to answer or provide any concrete information. Without the attorney’s, the family would not know their rights, nor would DHS make sure to adhere to the law, due process or even follow policy. I don’t fully trust DHS at this point, and I don’t know if I could take in a child for adoption without being certain that the child was truly endanger with their biological parents or the biological parents truly could not care for their child. I ethically could not adopt a child knowing that the child might have been removed from their biological parents in an unethical manner. This is the very reason to why I don’t trust International adoptions, yet our country could be following practices that may be just as unethical.